On Leidseplein, near the Kleine Gartmanplantsoen, sits a building that reinvents itself by the hour. Café in the City is just that: restaurant, cocktail bar and nightclub at the same time, without feeling like an identity crisis. Open seven days a week, and a different crowd every day. Business lunch on Wednesday, date night on Thursday, and on Friday night the tables slide aside.
The regular eye-catchers are The Dinner Party and the Sushimi Bash. The Dinner Party is the evening program where you eat à la carte while live performers set the mood. Saxophonist Saxy Mr. S plays through the room, Thomas Hensbroek steps up as singer, and together they make an ordinary dinner into something more festive. Not a big show, but just enough to make you feel like you're somewhere instead of just eating somewhere.
The Sushimi Bash is something else. Every Monday, when the rest of the city has not yet properly started the week, Café in the City throws sushi into the mix. It's a weekly event that makes Monday nights a little less gloomy. Good find. Then there's Cocktail Heaven, the name for the cocktail program that runs throughout the week. Creative cocktails as an integral part of what the business wants to be, not an afterthought.
The Dinner Party combines live music with food in a way that works: saxophone, singing and an a la carte menu in one evening.
Café in the City also has a branch in Rotterdam, but the Amsterdam location is right where you want to be if you want to experience something. Leidseplein is not a quiet neighborhood, and that's fitting. Anyone who steps in here on a Friday night knows what's coming. And anyone who sits there on Monday for the Sushimi Bash just booked right. The Dinner Party combines live music with food in a way that works: saxophone, singing and an à la carte menu all in one evening.